| Keith Wilson’s paintings are icons; they are dedicated to an architecture that is no longer conceived or constructed. They also represent his continuous study of architectural form and the history of the place of buildings in paintings. In his work he uses building structures and details in playful juxtaposition, allowing classical elements and vernacular constructions to have their own way, proliferating variations. His color is similarly the product of memory and imagination, inspired by the painted buildings he has seen in Italy and Greece. The result of this graphic exploration is a body of several hundred paintings and drawings, in which memory of historic form, fantasies of buildings that might be, and studies for commissioned works are all intermixed.
This fusion of personal vision with the serious study of architecture is more than an artist’s personal vocabulary. It is also the expression of a designer’s effort to resurrect a spirit of playfulness and invention long out of favor in the architectural profession.
The artist’s purpose in limiting his painted works to such an intimate scale is to invite close scrutiny, limit distractions, and intensify involvement of the viewer’s imagination with the work.
Recently, the artist has been printing signed limited edition prints of the paintings from his private collection. The printing method employed has a very high resolution which reproduces the brilliance and transparent qualities of the original watercolor paintings using permanent, non-fading ink on 100% rag Somerset watercolor paper.
Keith Wilson was born in 1954 in Redding, California and has lived in the Bay Area since 1972. He has traveled extensively in Britain, Europe, Japan, China, Chile and Tunisia with his camera and sketchbook.
Keith Wilson received his BA in Environmental Design in 1976 and his Master's degree in Architecture in 1979, both from the University of California, Berkeley. Keith's MA thesis was "Paul Klee + Memory: An Approach to Architectural Ornament".
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Keith Wilson © 2002 | join our e-mail list
